On That Midnight Street 4/?
Title: On That Midnight Street
Author: painted_ship
Pairing(s): Martin Crieff/ Molly Hooper
Rating: R overall, PG for now
Warnings: Fluff, Angst. More fluff. Smut on the horizon. Crossover with the Sherlock universe.
Disclaimer: I own nothing in either of the universes that I’m shamelessly smushing together for my own (and hopefully your) amusement.
Summary: MJN Air is chartered to fly a dead man back home to Ireland. Carolyn is determined that there will be no mishaps, Molly is determined to enjoy flying and Douglas is determined to play cupid. Oh, and Arthur is determined to be cheerful.
Molly remains in her seat for the rest of the flight, nerves tingling and heart beating double time in her chest. She feels a blush creep into her cheeks every time Carolyn looks in her direction.
To be caught, flying a plane. But it had been his idea, after all.
She twists and fidgets her hands in her lap. They don’t feel right, don’t feel quite her own. They’re warmer than they ought to be, but it doesn’t feel like her own body heat, even though by now it must be. She blushes again and this time she knows she cannot blame her attempts at amateur aviation.
To be caught with the captain. What on earth must it have looked like?
She’s not really sure what to think of the captain. Martin, she reminds herself. He had been quiet and nervously chatty by turns in the taxi, similar, really, on the flight deck. Not smooth, certainly.
But why should he be smooth? You don’t know he’s trying to chat you up. He probably isn’t. Most men aren’t. He was just making sure you didn’t crash the plane. Of course.
‘Teaorcoffee?’
‘Sorry?’
She jumps in her seat. Arthur, the steward, who isn’t, apparently, a steward, is beaming down at her.
‘Teaorcoffee?’
‘Oh. Er, umm. Tea, please.’
Arthur pours out a cup of tea and places it on the tray table in front of her.
‘Did you enjoy watching us take off? It’s brilliant isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It is very exciting.’
Arthur’s smile widens.
‘Mum said you were the reason the plane did a little wobble. I fell off my seat.’
‘Oh!’ Molly feels the blood rush into her face, ‘Yes, I’m really sorry I was... umm...’
‘Flying the plane! I know, Mum told me. Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt myself. Skip sorted it all out, I know. He’s brilliant. He once landed the plane on one engine. It was brilliant!’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah! One of them blew up when we hit a goose.’
Molly looks suddenly out of the window at the wing and the jet suspended beneath it.
‘Oh! Don’t worry, we have two engines now.’
‘That’s... that’s good...’
‘You were very good at flying the plane. I didn’t notice until the wobble. Did you do the take off too?’
‘Oh, no. No!’
‘I guess not. Skip never lets other people fly the plane, he’s very definite about that. He doesn’t really like Douglas flying it. You must be very special.’
Molly just nods, still slightly shaken by the revelation that even a goose has the capacity to bring down an aircraft. Getting no particular response, Arthur and the drinks trolley move away, going over to startle a gently snoring funeral director. Molly sits gripping the edge of the tray table for a moment or two and, having established that the plane is not about to drop out of the sky, tries to relax in her seat.
‘You must be very special.’
The words strike her for the first time.
Am I special? Does he think I’m special?
She blushes, again, her breathing faltering at the idea. It’s utterly, ridiculous, of course. He must meet simply hundreds of women, all of them more interesting and special than Molly.
There’s probably nothing going on.
Just because he’s clearly being egged on by the first officer. Which he is, almost certainly. Either that or the poor man has a frankly alarming case of bladder weakness.
No, no, he’s been insinuating things ever since he invited me aboard, even if I was too overcome to notice it at first.
But still. Just because he’s cheeky and trying to insinuate something doesn’t mean anything is going on. He probably does it with Martin and all the women. It’s probably a running joke. I’m just one of many.
Martin doesn’t let them fly the plane, though.
Well, of course not. That would be silly. I just happened to meet him on a very empty flight.
She looks out of the window and all she can see is clouds, and possibly a tiny bit of what might be sea. The funeral director has begun to snore gently again. The second man is reading a magazine and occasionally there sounds the silky shuffle of a page turning. From the galley come muffled voices and the clink and splash of washing up, and in the background, pervading everything else, the constant drone of the engines.
Molly thinks back on her morning, before she’d even considered that she might be flying full stop, let alone to anywhere interesting. Her schedule, like the morgue, had been fairly empty. At eleven, Sherlock had appeared with the suddenness of an April monsoon and had proceeded to flirt with her until finally she’d given in under the charm offensive and allowed him to burn a patch on poor Mrs Stone’s leg with an iron.
She tried, she really did. She wasn’t a stupid woman, and it had become very clear to her that he was never going to mean it, really mean it. She was being horribly used. The only genuine expression of affection he’d ever shown towards her had been at the aftermath of the explosion at the swimming pool.
Sergeant Donovan had let her accompany the police to the scene after she’d arrived at the station in near hysterics with a rapidly purpling bruise on the side of her head, begging them to check The Science of Deduction to find out where ‘the pool where Carl died’ was.
Seeing him, and John, in the back of an ambulance, draped in blankets, sopping wet, but mercifully alive, she had burst into tears on the spot.
He hadn’t smiled at her, hadn’t reassured her he was alright.
He’d asked her where the bruise came from. As if she was just another corpse on a slab.
When she’d told him, he’d looked slightly surprised, then slightly guilty.
He’d said: ‘Thank you’.
Now everything was back to normal. She mostly convinces herself he doesn’t mean to be so cruel. That it’s just how he is and that she loves him anyway. But it’s wearing. She’s not sure that ‘love’ is the term, anymore. When he’s around, she cannot get enough, but she never misses him when he isn’t.
She still cares about him, still worries that Jim Moriarty is going to go after him again and that Sherlock won’t be so lucky, that there won’t be a large body of water to escape to, that he won’t have John to drag him out of harm’s way.
Oh yes, John.
Molly likes John. He is calm and quiet and polite. He asks her how she is. They have conversations about the hospital and how it’s changed, drinking lukewarm coffee and keeping half an eye on Sherlock to make sure he doesn’t damage himself or the equipment.
Molly is also very, very jealous of John. She doesn’t like to admit it too often. Most of the time she thinks it might be a ridiculous figment of her imagination. But, at other times, she catches the look in John’s eyes when he’s looking at Sherlock and she thinks that, just perhaps, she isn’t imagining it at all.
It used to bother her, really bother her, but increasingly, it doesn’t. It upsets her in a way remote and distant from her actual life. The two of them occupy a world of which she has only ever heard descriptions and, not counting the awful incident with Jim, a world which she has never seen. She only ever views the remains, the collateral damage.
That is, she thinks realistically, as close as she ever wants to get. As mesmerising as Sherlock is, she has come to the opinion, consciously or not, that she doesn’t wish to get any closer. He is, as she sees it, like a star. Beautiful, striking and even magical from a distance. Up close, absolute, fiery, destruction.
She shifts in her seat. She had been doing well until this morning. And then he’d come along and overwhelmed all her defences, like a forest fire against a bucket of water, and before she knew where was, she was tidying her hair, smiling her brightest and didn’t even think to ask why he wanted to burn a corpse’s leg with an iron.
And then, this afternoon, she allowed herself to be wooed aboard a flight to Dublin by the dulcet tones of the match-making first officer and the sweetly Sherlock-ian face of the captain. She should be ashamed of herself.
She is startled out of her reverie by a loud bing bong! noise over the intercom and a voice which sounds like Sherlock on Prozac. In the sing-song lilt of overly cheery pilots everywhere, Martin’s voice informs the three passengers that they will soon be landing in Dublin. The snoring funeral director wakes with a jerk and nearly upsets his un-drunk tea. The other man straightens his magazine with a clear of the throat.
Molly tightens her fingers around the edge of her chair. Landing. The difficult part of flying.
‘I do hope you enjoyed your flight, Miss Hooper.’
‘Oh, yes, very much. Thank you.’
Douglas smiles smugly at her. Martin smiles rather more sheepishly, only too aware of Carolyn’s gimlet eyes boring into his forehead from across the aisle.
‘I hope you enjoy Dublin.’
She blushes.
‘Thank you.’
Douglas coughs, delicately.
‘We’re staying at the Fox and Bucket, if you’d care to join us?’
‘Oh, actually I thought I’d go and stay with a friend.’
Douglas’ features shift into mild disappointment. Martin feels all the warmth go out of him in a nauseating rush. He shouldn’t care where she stays or who with, get a grip, Martin, she was hardly going to ask to stay in your room for the night, was she? For goodness sake, man.
‘Well, I hope you have a smashing time. Where does your friend live?’
‘Umm, Julian Street.’
‘Ah, yes. Lovely.’
Molly exits down the stairway, following the funeral directors, who are being assisted and hampered in equal parts by Arthur. Silence reigns in the aisle until she is safely out of earshot. Martin’s gaze has followed her wistfully out of the aircraft but he is brought abruptly back when Carolyn claps her hands together.
‘Right, that’s that, then. Nice try, Douglas, but even telling Martin to let her fly my plane hasn’t won her over.’
‘Oh I’m afraid I can’t take credit for that. That was all Martin’s idea. A very good one though, I thought.’
Martin says nothing. He can’t speak. His voice feels as though it’s dried up entirely. Carolyn regards him with a look of mingled despair and distaste, while Douglas regards him with a look of increasingly patronising pity.
He’d given it his best shot, he’d even let her fly the plane, and now she was no doubt running away as fast as Customs would let her. He had failed, utterly. He felt miserable.
‘Oh, cheer up, Martin. We have a giddy night of revelry in the Emerald Isle ahead of us. I may even buy dinner.’
‘Steady on, Carolyn.’
‘Do shut up, Douglas. However, before I do anything of the kind I want you two to ensure that Mr Jacobs makes it safely into the car waiting outside. Chop, chop! Oh and, Martin? Try and pull yourself together or they’ll be putting you into the hearse instead.’
‘Alright.’
He sounds hoarse even to his own ears. Heavily, he steps out of the door and starts down the stairs.
Back in the cabin, Carolyn eyes Douglas sharply.
‘Why are you smiling? You look as if you’ve just stolen a bottle of Talisker.’
‘I smile, Carolyn, because ‘Julian Street’ does not, according to my newly extensive knowledge of Dublin, actually exist.’
‘Ah. She’s deliberately given him the slip, you mean.’
‘It does look that way, yes.’
Carolyn looks out of the doorway. Below, on the tarmac, she can see Arthur and Martin receiving instructions from the funeral directors. Arthur looks as though he’s about to start a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ at a child’s party: Martin looks like the chief mourner. She bites her lip, in thought.
‘This isn’t part of some greater scheme of yours, is it Douglas?’
‘No! Gifted as I no doubt am, Carolyn, even I can’t make someone lie about visiting a non-existent location, using only the power of thought. I barely spoke to her, in fact. I’m afraid her inspiration is, therefore, due entirely to our illustrious Captain.’
‘I rather feared as much. Well, Douglas, it was a valiant effort. I commend your tenacity if not your methods.’
‘Thank you, although...’
‘What?’
‘Well... I haven’t lost hope just yet. It was one of my plans, after all.’
‘Douglas, she made her excuses and left. I fail to see the source of your optimism. Martin is hardly likely to go after her: he has, thus far, failed to do so. I can’t see him suddenly abandoning the habit of a lifetime and being anything other than a hopeless wet blanket with a spine of papier-mâché.’
‘No. But, well. We shall see. Let’s just say I anticipate further developments.’
What a ridiculous lie!
Molly doesn’t have a friend living in Dublin. She doesn’t know anyone in the entirety of Ireland, as far as she knows. But she’s silly and weak and cowardly and she wanted to run away and panic somewhere quietly and now she’s told the most ridiculous lie ever and she’s going to have to walk off as if she knows where she’s going, as if she has a destination in mind. And he looks so sad, so hurt, like a kicked puppy, and I had no right to do that, none at all, he’s been nothing but lovely and sweet to me...
Which is scary, because so few people, so few men, are that nice to me.
So, yes. Get in a taxi. Find a hotel with nice rooms and a spa and treat yourself and try and enjoy Dublin and don’t bump into any of them or you will look like the most awful, terrible... bitch!, yes, bitch. The most terrible bitch who ever lived.
Pathetic.
Chapter Five
Author: painted_ship
Pairing(s): Martin Crieff/ Molly Hooper
Rating: R overall, PG for now
Warnings: Fluff, Angst. More fluff. Smut on the horizon. Crossover with the Sherlock universe.
Disclaimer: I own nothing in either of the universes that I’m shamelessly smushing together for my own (and hopefully your) amusement.
Summary: MJN Air is chartered to fly a dead man back home to Ireland. Carolyn is determined that there will be no mishaps, Molly is determined to enjoy flying and Douglas is determined to play cupid. Oh, and Arthur is determined to be cheerful.
Molly remains in her seat for the rest of the flight, nerves tingling and heart beating double time in her chest. She feels a blush creep into her cheeks every time Carolyn looks in her direction.
To be caught, flying a plane. But it had been his idea, after all.
She twists and fidgets her hands in her lap. They don’t feel right, don’t feel quite her own. They’re warmer than they ought to be, but it doesn’t feel like her own body heat, even though by now it must be. She blushes again and this time she knows she cannot blame her attempts at amateur aviation.
To be caught with the captain. What on earth must it have looked like?
She’s not really sure what to think of the captain. Martin, she reminds herself. He had been quiet and nervously chatty by turns in the taxi, similar, really, on the flight deck. Not smooth, certainly.
But why should he be smooth? You don’t know he’s trying to chat you up. He probably isn’t. Most men aren’t. He was just making sure you didn’t crash the plane. Of course.
‘Teaorcoffee?’
‘Sorry?’
She jumps in her seat. Arthur, the steward, who isn’t, apparently, a steward, is beaming down at her.
‘Teaorcoffee?’
‘Oh. Er, umm. Tea, please.’
Arthur pours out a cup of tea and places it on the tray table in front of her.
‘Did you enjoy watching us take off? It’s brilliant isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It is very exciting.’
Arthur’s smile widens.
‘Mum said you were the reason the plane did a little wobble. I fell off my seat.’
‘Oh!’ Molly feels the blood rush into her face, ‘Yes, I’m really sorry I was... umm...’
‘Flying the plane! I know, Mum told me. Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt myself. Skip sorted it all out, I know. He’s brilliant. He once landed the plane on one engine. It was brilliant!’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah! One of them blew up when we hit a goose.’
Molly looks suddenly out of the window at the wing and the jet suspended beneath it.
‘Oh! Don’t worry, we have two engines now.’
‘That’s... that’s good...’
‘You were very good at flying the plane. I didn’t notice until the wobble. Did you do the take off too?’
‘Oh, no. No!’
‘I guess not. Skip never lets other people fly the plane, he’s very definite about that. He doesn’t really like Douglas flying it. You must be very special.’
Molly just nods, still slightly shaken by the revelation that even a goose has the capacity to bring down an aircraft. Getting no particular response, Arthur and the drinks trolley move away, going over to startle a gently snoring funeral director. Molly sits gripping the edge of the tray table for a moment or two and, having established that the plane is not about to drop out of the sky, tries to relax in her seat.
‘You must be very special.’
The words strike her for the first time.
Am I special? Does he think I’m special?
She blushes, again, her breathing faltering at the idea. It’s utterly, ridiculous, of course. He must meet simply hundreds of women, all of them more interesting and special than Molly.
There’s probably nothing going on.
Just because he’s clearly being egged on by the first officer. Which he is, almost certainly. Either that or the poor man has a frankly alarming case of bladder weakness.
No, no, he’s been insinuating things ever since he invited me aboard, even if I was too overcome to notice it at first.
But still. Just because he’s cheeky and trying to insinuate something doesn’t mean anything is going on. He probably does it with Martin and all the women. It’s probably a running joke. I’m just one of many.
Martin doesn’t let them fly the plane, though.
Well, of course not. That would be silly. I just happened to meet him on a very empty flight.
She looks out of the window and all she can see is clouds, and possibly a tiny bit of what might be sea. The funeral director has begun to snore gently again. The second man is reading a magazine and occasionally there sounds the silky shuffle of a page turning. From the galley come muffled voices and the clink and splash of washing up, and in the background, pervading everything else, the constant drone of the engines.
Molly thinks back on her morning, before she’d even considered that she might be flying full stop, let alone to anywhere interesting. Her schedule, like the morgue, had been fairly empty. At eleven, Sherlock had appeared with the suddenness of an April monsoon and had proceeded to flirt with her until finally she’d given in under the charm offensive and allowed him to burn a patch on poor Mrs Stone’s leg with an iron.
She tried, she really did. She wasn’t a stupid woman, and it had become very clear to her that he was never going to mean it, really mean it. She was being horribly used. The only genuine expression of affection he’d ever shown towards her had been at the aftermath of the explosion at the swimming pool.
Sergeant Donovan had let her accompany the police to the scene after she’d arrived at the station in near hysterics with a rapidly purpling bruise on the side of her head, begging them to check The Science of Deduction to find out where ‘the pool where Carl died’ was.
Seeing him, and John, in the back of an ambulance, draped in blankets, sopping wet, but mercifully alive, she had burst into tears on the spot.
He hadn’t smiled at her, hadn’t reassured her he was alright.
He’d asked her where the bruise came from. As if she was just another corpse on a slab.
When she’d told him, he’d looked slightly surprised, then slightly guilty.
He’d said: ‘Thank you’.
Now everything was back to normal. She mostly convinces herself he doesn’t mean to be so cruel. That it’s just how he is and that she loves him anyway. But it’s wearing. She’s not sure that ‘love’ is the term, anymore. When he’s around, she cannot get enough, but she never misses him when he isn’t.
She still cares about him, still worries that Jim Moriarty is going to go after him again and that Sherlock won’t be so lucky, that there won’t be a large body of water to escape to, that he won’t have John to drag him out of harm’s way.
Oh yes, John.
Molly likes John. He is calm and quiet and polite. He asks her how she is. They have conversations about the hospital and how it’s changed, drinking lukewarm coffee and keeping half an eye on Sherlock to make sure he doesn’t damage himself or the equipment.
Molly is also very, very jealous of John. She doesn’t like to admit it too often. Most of the time she thinks it might be a ridiculous figment of her imagination. But, at other times, she catches the look in John’s eyes when he’s looking at Sherlock and she thinks that, just perhaps, she isn’t imagining it at all.
It used to bother her, really bother her, but increasingly, it doesn’t. It upsets her in a way remote and distant from her actual life. The two of them occupy a world of which she has only ever heard descriptions and, not counting the awful incident with Jim, a world which she has never seen. She only ever views the remains, the collateral damage.
That is, she thinks realistically, as close as she ever wants to get. As mesmerising as Sherlock is, she has come to the opinion, consciously or not, that she doesn’t wish to get any closer. He is, as she sees it, like a star. Beautiful, striking and even magical from a distance. Up close, absolute, fiery, destruction.
She shifts in her seat. She had been doing well until this morning. And then he’d come along and overwhelmed all her defences, like a forest fire against a bucket of water, and before she knew where was, she was tidying her hair, smiling her brightest and didn’t even think to ask why he wanted to burn a corpse’s leg with an iron.
And then, this afternoon, she allowed herself to be wooed aboard a flight to Dublin by the dulcet tones of the match-making first officer and the sweetly Sherlock-ian face of the captain. She should be ashamed of herself.
She is startled out of her reverie by a loud bing bong! noise over the intercom and a voice which sounds like Sherlock on Prozac. In the sing-song lilt of overly cheery pilots everywhere, Martin’s voice informs the three passengers that they will soon be landing in Dublin. The snoring funeral director wakes with a jerk and nearly upsets his un-drunk tea. The other man straightens his magazine with a clear of the throat.
Molly tightens her fingers around the edge of her chair. Landing. The difficult part of flying.
‘I do hope you enjoyed your flight, Miss Hooper.’
‘Oh, yes, very much. Thank you.’
Douglas smiles smugly at her. Martin smiles rather more sheepishly, only too aware of Carolyn’s gimlet eyes boring into his forehead from across the aisle.
‘I hope you enjoy Dublin.’
She blushes.
‘Thank you.’
Douglas coughs, delicately.
‘We’re staying at the Fox and Bucket, if you’d care to join us?’
‘Oh, actually I thought I’d go and stay with a friend.’
Douglas’ features shift into mild disappointment. Martin feels all the warmth go out of him in a nauseating rush. He shouldn’t care where she stays or who with, get a grip, Martin, she was hardly going to ask to stay in your room for the night, was she? For goodness sake, man.
‘Well, I hope you have a smashing time. Where does your friend live?’
‘Umm, Julian Street.’
‘Ah, yes. Lovely.’
Molly exits down the stairway, following the funeral directors, who are being assisted and hampered in equal parts by Arthur. Silence reigns in the aisle until she is safely out of earshot. Martin’s gaze has followed her wistfully out of the aircraft but he is brought abruptly back when Carolyn claps her hands together.
‘Right, that’s that, then. Nice try, Douglas, but even telling Martin to let her fly my plane hasn’t won her over.’
‘Oh I’m afraid I can’t take credit for that. That was all Martin’s idea. A very good one though, I thought.’
Martin says nothing. He can’t speak. His voice feels as though it’s dried up entirely. Carolyn regards him with a look of mingled despair and distaste, while Douglas regards him with a look of increasingly patronising pity.
He’d given it his best shot, he’d even let her fly the plane, and now she was no doubt running away as fast as Customs would let her. He had failed, utterly. He felt miserable.
‘Oh, cheer up, Martin. We have a giddy night of revelry in the Emerald Isle ahead of us. I may even buy dinner.’
‘Steady on, Carolyn.’
‘Do shut up, Douglas. However, before I do anything of the kind I want you two to ensure that Mr Jacobs makes it safely into the car waiting outside. Chop, chop! Oh and, Martin? Try and pull yourself together or they’ll be putting you into the hearse instead.’
‘Alright.’
He sounds hoarse even to his own ears. Heavily, he steps out of the door and starts down the stairs.
Back in the cabin, Carolyn eyes Douglas sharply.
‘Why are you smiling? You look as if you’ve just stolen a bottle of Talisker.’
‘I smile, Carolyn, because ‘Julian Street’ does not, according to my newly extensive knowledge of Dublin, actually exist.’
‘Ah. She’s deliberately given him the slip, you mean.’
‘It does look that way, yes.’
Carolyn looks out of the doorway. Below, on the tarmac, she can see Arthur and Martin receiving instructions from the funeral directors. Arthur looks as though he’s about to start a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ at a child’s party: Martin looks like the chief mourner. She bites her lip, in thought.
‘This isn’t part of some greater scheme of yours, is it Douglas?’
‘No! Gifted as I no doubt am, Carolyn, even I can’t make someone lie about visiting a non-existent location, using only the power of thought. I barely spoke to her, in fact. I’m afraid her inspiration is, therefore, due entirely to our illustrious Captain.’
‘I rather feared as much. Well, Douglas, it was a valiant effort. I commend your tenacity if not your methods.’
‘Thank you, although...’
‘What?’
‘Well... I haven’t lost hope just yet. It was one of my plans, after all.’
‘Douglas, she made her excuses and left. I fail to see the source of your optimism. Martin is hardly likely to go after her: he has, thus far, failed to do so. I can’t see him suddenly abandoning the habit of a lifetime and being anything other than a hopeless wet blanket with a spine of papier-mâché.’
‘No. But, well. We shall see. Let’s just say I anticipate further developments.’
What a ridiculous lie!
Molly doesn’t have a friend living in Dublin. She doesn’t know anyone in the entirety of Ireland, as far as she knows. But she’s silly and weak and cowardly and she wanted to run away and panic somewhere quietly and now she’s told the most ridiculous lie ever and she’s going to have to walk off as if she knows where she’s going, as if she has a destination in mind. And he looks so sad, so hurt, like a kicked puppy, and I had no right to do that, none at all, he’s been nothing but lovely and sweet to me...
Which is scary, because so few people, so few men, are that nice to me.
So, yes. Get in a taxi. Find a hotel with nice rooms and a spa and treat yourself and try and enjoy Dublin and don’t bump into any of them or you will look like the most awful, terrible... bitch!, yes, bitch. The most terrible bitch who ever lived.
Pathetic.
Chapter Five